Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Team Baby has pulled out to a wide lead, thanks to several key factors:

2) We managed to get me good health insurance.

3) We found a great high-risk OB/GYN.

Yesterday was out first appointment. The office is in a good location, close to the hospital and delightfully right next to one of my all-time favorite restaurants. The nurse was like some kind of high-efficiency breeding-assistant machine, tossing pamphlets at me while weighing me and giving directions to the bloodwork lab and demanding to know which hospital I planned to use for the birth. The doctor herself looked exactly like a Berkeley mom from the 70's and I responded like a little kid who finally found the right Mommy's legs to cling to in the supermarket. I just had this sense of overwhelming relief and safety. She's got dark and silver long straight hair, no makeup, glasses and wore a cotton peasant shirt and a long full skirt. Every other high risk OB/GYN I have met wore a conservative suit and a white lab coat, and I'm not dissing that outfit, it inspires confidence and a sense of authority. But having this woman who looked like she would ask me over for whole-grain, honey-sweetened fruit bars and a discussion of the effectiveness of Take Back The Night rallies was like finding my lost tribe.

She managed to squeeze me in for an ultrasound, so we tromped downstairs and met the ultrasound tech who looked about 20 and like she may have dated Joe Grillo back in the Worcester days. I got the dildo-cam, and she was a whiz with that thing. We were concerned with my cervical length, as when the Great Baby Race was first conceived, I got a dildo-cam estimate of a mere 2 cm, which was better than the 1 cm that my gynecological oncologist suspected, but still basically nothing to work with. We were also concerned with some very light spotting that I had been having off and on. And of course we wanted to make sure there was a normally growing embryo somewhere up in there.

Hip ultrasound tech (HUT) took a look and said, "Wow!"

Terrified us stared at her, unable to speak.

HUT commented, "Your cervix is long!"

Our first thought (confirmed later that we both jumped to the same conclusion) was that she was incompetent, because surely any idiot would know that my cervix is not only not long, it is a true shorty, like a man amputated at the upper thigh from all the hacking and cautery and biopsies and scalpeling. I began explaining that no, surely my cervix would never be considered long, and started going into the particulars.

HUT interrupted, "Oh, I know all your history. What I'm saying is, your cervix may have been 2cm then, but it measuring 5.5cm now which is nice and long. The doc warned me it might look weird, but it looks healthy, and it is definitely a good length."

Luke and I were overjoyed, it was like this wonderful gift, this precious surprise...

HUT continued, "And that 's not the only surprise I have for you. Here's a baby. And here's another baby."